The Bible is the Word of God. That is to say, as a result of God's
direct inspiration the words of Scripture, though put to pen by people, are in
fact the words of God Himself. Through propositions expressed in ordinary human
language, the Creator of the universe has revealed Himself and intonation about
His creatures. The Bible's words are true, clear, and powerful if only because
they are His words, breathed from His mouth, as it were.

Not
everyone believes this. In the 18th century Johann Semler called "the
interchangeable use of the terms 'Scripture' and 'Word of God" theology's "root
of all evil."1 But might he have foreseen a
claim like the one which ALC representatives to the LCMS made in 1980? They
said ALC people

only want to say that all human formulations have a
tentativeness within them. They do not want Christian doctrine to become the
occasion for idolatry. Our trust is in God, not in human formulation about
Him.2

Since the category of
"human formulations" also includes the Bible, the ALC representatives thus
raise perhaps the most basic contemporary question: not, is the Bible
the Word of God, but can it be the Word of God? Can any human words be
identified unequivocally as the words of God Himself? Today, most theologians
worldwide would say no.

Why? It is impossible to give all the reasons
here.3 We will dwell on but three of the
reasons which came to a head in Karl Barth, the theologian of neoorthodoxy who
had the greatest impact on conservative American Lutherans. Then I will Suggest
ideas for asserting today that the Bible is God's Word.

I. Barth and
(some of) his Predecessors

Barth (1886 - 1968) called the Bible the
Word of God, but only in a special sense. "Scripture is holy and the Word of
God," he indicated, "because by the Holy Spirit it became and will become to
the Church a witness to divine revelation."4
For Barth, God so utterly transcended this world that His Word could not simply
be available in a book. Rather, God's Word broke in when

A free divine decision is made. It then comes about
that the Bible, the Bible in concreto, this or that biblical context . .
. is taken and used as an instrument in the hand of God, i.e., it speaks to and
is heard by us as the authentic witness to divine revelation and is therefore
present as the Word of God.5

The Bible served as an occasion for encounter with God when God pleased. Barth
said the Bible was authoritative for what it did, not for what it
was. He even said the prophets and apostles "can be at fault in every
word, and have been at fault in every word, and yet . . . being justified and
sanctified by grace alone, they still have spoken the Word of God in their
fallible and erring human word,"6 For Barth,
Scripture was a contact - point for the dynamic Word of God to reach people.
But Scripture was not the Word of God, nor could it be.

The
Influence of Kant.Barth had accepted the agnosticism of Immanuel Kant
(1724 - 1804). In an effort to mediate between the two dominant philosophical
movements of his day, radical empiricism on one hand and rationalism on the
other hand, Kant said our organs of sense provide us with sensory stimulation
and our minds impose structure, order, and regularity on the stimuli. We cannot
know things as they are apart from our minds, but only as our minds provide
them with structure, order, and regularity. Therefore the idea of revelation
would be nonsense. The content which would be revealed would lack structure,
order, and regularity, and hence would be fundamentally unknowable. Kant left
no room for revelation of God in ordinary language Barth and other neoorthodox
theologians had Kant in the backs of their minds when they taught that God's
Word was a personal encounter, not a revelation of information.7 The Bible could not be the Word of God in a
Kantian view because it was information about the unknowable in the structuring
category of language.

Historical Criticism. Modern
historical method raised a similar challenge to the Bible as the Word of God.
Near the turn of the 20th century Ernst Troeltsch (1865 - 1923) noted that
historical accounts are never completely certain, only probable, and can always
be revised. He said every event is analogous to every other, and that all
events fit into a context. These ideas enabled historians to form judgments and
interpretations. But, as Troeltsch realized, they spelled disaster for the
traditional Christian faith. Biblical history was also subjected to relentless
criticism at the hands of scholars who ruled out the prospect of supernatural
intervention in the world. Yet these same scholars, as human beings, had only
limited perspective and knowledge, and therefore kept revising their own
interpretations. Again the question arose: how can events in the world around
us tell us anything about God?8

Barth tried to secure faith from the uncertainties of critical history,
even though he agreed with most of Troeltsch's principles. Against Troeltsch,
he did affirm that God's revelation broke into history in the Incarnation.
Still, he saw no reason why Scripture should be immune to criticism. Let
historians expose, error upon error. Barth's faith remained unshaken. They
could only criticize the Bible; they could not get their hands on the Word of
God, the personal revelatory encounter which would happen through the Bible at
God's good pleasure.9 For Barth, the Bible
could not be the Word of God because the Word of a transcendent God simply
would not be subject to the kind of criticism to which the Bible, a human
writing, was so obviously prone.

Classic Reformed Theology.It might be surprising to list classic Reformed theology as yet another
factor separating the Bible from the Word of God, but Barth himself called
attention to it. Once he said his premises were

the Old Testament and the tradition of the Reformed
Churches. As a Reformed Churchman - and not only, I think, as such - I must
keep my sure distance from the Lutheran est and the Lutheran type of
assurance of salvation.10

Consider assurance of salvation in Calvinism. It cannot come from
the Bible. If I am reprobate (elect to damnation), though I read Biblical
promises of grace, God doesn't mean to offer me grace. For me, He designs the
Gospel call as "a savour of death and the ground of a severer condemnation."11 Therefore, passages teaching universal grace
are not the Word of God - not as we use the phrase. They are not
true. God wants all men to be saved, says Scripture, but if I am reprobate
God doesn't want me to be saved.12

Further, for Calvin the Holy Spirit does not always work to save
through the Gospel; rather, the Spirit bestows His special illumination only on
some of those who hear the Word preached.13
This concept stands in contrast to the classic Lutheran insistence that the
Word which God speaks always brings God with it.14 In practice, Barth's idea that Scripture
becomes the Word of God when God so wills does not differ much from Calvin's
view that the Holy Spirit only deigns at times to work graciously through the
Word. In both cases, the important work of God is the one that occurs
now, one that does not necessarily accompany the Bible.15 In neither case can the Bible in all its
parts be the ultimate Word of God because God, in His sovereign will, does not
always choose to invest it with attributes of God's Word, such as unqualified
veracity and saving power.

II. Asserting in our day that the Holy
Bible is the Word of God

There is a parallel here with the
Incarnation.Christ is God in the flesh. The Bible is the Word of God
given through the pens of men. It too is divine and human. Just as in the
Person of Christ the divine and human natures are distinct but not separate (so
that the human blood of Jesus has the divine power to cleanse from sin,
1 Jn. 1:7), so the human words of the Bible are God's
words and therefore His truth. The finite is capable of the infinite!

This point stands out as crucial because Barth (and his antecedents)
assumed "that there is an antithesis between divinity and humanity, the
infinite and the finite."16 With this
premise, one easily concludes that since the Bible is a human book, it should
be subject to criticism. But the Bible is God's Word, and so beyond criticism.
"Let God be true though every man be false" (Rom. 3:4).
Charging Scripture with error is as futile as sifting through the Gospels
trying to catch Jesus in some sin. We know He is the sinless Son of God on the
basis of clear texts which teach this doctrine; we know Scripture is God's Word
on the basis of similarly clear passages.17

The Bible is clear on this point.After spending so much
time on the question whether the Bible can be the Word of God, we must add that
no such question exists in Scripture itself. The Bible depicts human words as
able to bear God's truth: If we "continue" in Jesus' words, He promised that we
will "know the truth" (Jn 8:31 - 32; see 2 Tim. 1:13 and 3:7). Scripture
says God reveals not only Himself, but also information about Himself: Paul
wrote that his Gospel "came through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:12). And many passages attest that God has spoken
the words of Scripture. In addition to the usually-cited texts, notice how OT
quotations are introduced in the NT. Jesus said David was "inspired by the
Spirit" (Mt. 22:43). In Acts 1, Peter told his
brethren, "the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke
beforehand by the mouth of David" (v. 16). Heb. 3:7
introduced a psalm quote with the words, "as the Holy Spirit says." In short,
Scripture has no problem with the Bible as the Word of God; only human reason
does.

Human reason cannot enhance Scriptural authority, but it can
head off some attacks on the Bible as the Word of God.We dare not set
forth extra-Biblical rationalizations of what God's Word must be like, then
expect the Bible to live up to them. For instance, we should not speculate that
God had to commit His Word to writing (He didn't), or that God's Word
can never conflict with science as we know it (science could be wrong), or that
the Word must enable us to meet some abstract standard of certainty (Christian
certainty is a certainty of faith which rests content with God's truth as He
gives it), or that one must be a Christian before he will recognize that the
Bible is God's Word (this makes it appear that individual salvation is but a
means to solving a basic problem of ignorance. The demons believe, i.e., know,
and shudder!).

We may use God-given reason to counter destructive
notions, though. For example, sober realism might expose Kant's theory of
knowledge for what it is - an attempt to base objectivity on subjectivity.18 In the Biblical account, God created an
orderly world. Its order is independent of the human faculty of thought. We
should capitalize on the apologetic value of reason to clear away potential
objections to Scripture.

Scripture has power. In most cases,
of course, people will not care much about Biblical authority until they become
Christians. So we must not forget that the Word is dynamic: "He (God) sent
forth His Word, and healed them, and delivered them from destruction" (Ps.
107:20). The Word is not just God having spoken at some time in the,
past, but God still speaking and working.

God gave us His Word
chiefly to make us "wise unto salvation" (2 Tim. 3:15).
Paul noted that "whatever was written in former days was written for our
learning, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we
might have hope" (Rom. 15:4). Jesus affirmed that His gracious words "are
Spirit and life" (Jn. 6:63); they convey the Holy
Spirit and life. Anyone hankering for an encounter with God need not resort to
Barth's near-mysticism. He can have it via the Bible's message of Law and
Gospel. Not only do God's promises depict treasures Christ won on the cross;
not only do they excite faith in those blessings and treasures as remote
objects; they actually impart forgiveness, life, and salvation to us.
Jesus made His disciples clean by the Word (Jn. 15:3).
Peter said we are born anew by the living Word (1 Pet.
1:23). James taught that the Word is able to save (Jas.
1:21). This Word has power as God's Word, a precious, wonderful
gift that goes on giving and giving and giving. It is not mere communication,
but transportation. It brings us a gracious God.19 This is the beauty of having the Word from
God as we do; it is what the world and the devil always seek to take away from
us.

Conclusion

In a Bible class an individual criticized
an aspect of the Church Growth movement on the basis of Scripture. One of the
other people present objected. He did not fault the interpretation or
application. Rather, he said, "That's a theological analysis. We're talking
here about practical considerations." Wow! How sobering! Even as we guard
against the "Barths" of this world and age, asserting that the Bible is the
Word of God, we still can lose the significance of this fact over "practical
considerations."

All people always ought to hear and obey what God,
their Creator and Ruler, says. The matter does not end here, though. Sin rears
its ugly head. Sinners want no part of God's Word, no matter how much they
already know about it. Our flesh plays up what we think on the basis of
what we see, from the intellectual to the "practical," in an effort to
drown Him out. But the Lord will not be silenced. In His boundless love, the
Savior refuses to keep His hard-won victory to Himself. He speaks His Word with
authority, not as men speak. This authority is not only commanding for our
obedience but compelling for our trust. The Holy Spirit accompanies the
Christ-centered Word into human hearts, making the unwilling willing. God
creates faith through His Word. And faith draws its life from the Word. That
faith knows that God's Word is all that matters, and that His Word to us is
"yes" in Jesus Christ. So regardless of the difficulties confronting that faith
- be they sophisticated sneers, commnonsense considerations, or the dread of
death - it resolutely ignores sight and clings to the authoritative Word of a
faithful God. It holds to Scripture.

6. Ibid. A penetrating analysis
of Barth and others is provided by Robert Preus, "The Doctrine of Revelation in
Contemporary Theology," Crisis in Lutheran Theology, ed. by John Warwick
Montgomery, second expanded edition (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1973),
2:18 - 29.

7. A summary of Kant's position, with
application to Biblical authority, is offered by W. David Beck, "Agnosticism:
Kant," Biblical Errancy, pp. 53 - 78. Other critiques of Kant may be found in
Beck, "Response," Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible, pp. 64 - 67 and James
I. Packer, "The Adequacy of Human Language," Inerrancy, pp. 204 - 205 and 215 -
16. The way neoorthodox theology, and Emil Brunner in particular, appropriated
Kant's categories is further discussed in Richard A. Muller, "Christ - The
Revelation of the Revealer? Brunner and Reformed Orthodoxy on the Doctrine of
the Word of God," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 26 (Sept.
1983): 307 - 319.

8. See Van Harvey's
description of Troeltsch's nagging issues in The Historian and the Believer;
The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1966) pp. 3 - 37. The degree to which modern historical
consciousness shapes much of contemporary American Lutheran theology ought to
be evident from a couple of quotes. Carl E. Braaten has written, "Luther held
to the univocal sense of scripture; basically he believed that its literal
meaning is identical with its historical content. In other words, things
happened exactly as they were written. Today it is impossible to assume the
literal historicity of all things recorded," Principles of Lutheran Theology
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), p. 19. And Duane A. Priebe has pointed out that
in Luther's case "it was still possible for him to understand his own theology
as essentially identical with the theology of the biblical texts, without a
strong sense of historical distance. The enlightenment and the subsequent
development of historical methodology, coupled with the emergence of historical
consciousness in its modern form, have made us much more aware of historical
relativity and historical distance", "Theology and Hermeneutics," Studies in
Lutheran Hermeneutics, p. 301.

9. Van Harvey
chides the neoorthodox: "It is impossible to claim at one and the same time. .
. that Christianity is founded on an interpretation of a concrete historical
event and that no historical judgments are relevant to its truth or falsity.
One cannot have historicity without risk" (p. 18). It is tempting, though, as
shown by a little-noticed exchange several years ago between 2 professors at a
theological institution which owed its existence to a commitment to historical
criticism (Seminex). Reviewing Edgar Krentz's book on The Historical Critical
Method, Edward Schroeder criticized Krentz for not going far enough. Instead of
looking for a limited "safe zone" where God might still operate in history,
Schroeder advocated a search for a different kind of history, one which has
been through the critical fires and has survived, namely, Easter. Krentz
responded, in effect, that Schroeder in his clever and equivocating proposal
yearned for historicity without risk. He scored Schroeder for saying precisely
nothing about "how historical method is useful in the study of the
'post-critical' Easter event," Currents in Theology and Mission 6 (Oct. 1979):
316; see the whole discussion, pp. 308 - 317.

10. Karl Barth, "The Word of God and the Task of the
Ministry," The Word of God and The Word of Man, tr. by Douglas Norton (New
York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 217, emphasis original.

12. Calvin knew he might be charged with making
God appear to be a liar, or, at best, an equivocator: "Still, it cannot be said
that he acts deceitfully, for though the external word only renders those who
hear it, and do not obey it, inexcusable, it is still truly regarded as an
evidence of the grace by which he reconciles men to himself" (ibid., p. 254 -
III xxiv 15). But in Calvin's theology God never intended to offer grace to the
reprobate. Calvin thus raises a self-contradiction when he depicts one's
rejection of grace in the gospel as "the ground of a severer condemnation." All
the universal call can be for the reprobate is "a savour of death" - though at
face value it claims to be just the opposite. Again: "But if it is so (you will
say), little faith can be put in the Gospel promises, which, in testifying
concerning the will of God, declare that he wills what is contrary to his
inviolable decree," i.e., promising grace to all people though he has elected
some to damnation. "Not at all; for however universal the promises of salvation
may be, there is no discrepancy between then and the predestination of the
reprobate, provided we attend to their effect" (ibid., p. 256 - III xxiv 17,
emphasis added). The last clause seems to entail the assumption that what God
wills must unyieldingly come to pass, or to appeal outright to human experience
("experience shows that this will, for the repentance of those whom he invites
to himself, is not such as to make him touch all their hearts" - ibid., p. 254
- III xxiv 15), or both. It should be noted that in either case, Calvin is not
treating Scripture as the supremely authoritative Word of God. Luther too spoke
of God's hidden will, but by that he meant a will truly hidden, and one which
in no way contradicted His revealed will which promises universal grace. In
fact, in the very section of The Bondage of the Will in which he discussed the
hidden God, Luther made it clear that Ez. 18:23 is a sure ("If those Divine
promises did not stand firm, to raise up consciences tormented with a sense of
sin and terrified by fear of death and judgment, what place would there be for
pardon or hope?") and universal (it "is concerned only to proclaim and offer to
the world the mercy of God") promise - The Bondage of the Will, tr. and ed. by
J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (Revell, 1957), pp. 167, 169.

14. David Hollaz summarized this view: "For if
the Holy Spirit would be separated from the Word of God, it would not be the
Word of God, or the Word of the Spirit, but it would be a human word" - quoted
in Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1957),
p. 184. The idea of the saving efficacy of the Word, however, can be traced to
Luther: "Holy Scripture, especially the New Testament, always inculcates faith
in Christ and magnificently proclaims Him" (LW 26, 146). Lutheran theology
consistently refused to distinguish between the "inner" and "outer" word in
Scripture. See Preus, Inspiration, pp. 175 - 176 and Bengt Haegglund, "The
Theology of the Word in John Gerhard," Concordia Theological Quarterly 46 (Apr.
- July l982): 209 - 217.

15. I have dwelt on
Barth's roots in Reformed theology at some length because nowadays it is a
shibboleth in many circles to hold that Calvin identified Scripture with the
Word of God more closely than Luther did. This caricature often finds its way
into textbooks. E.g., Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and
Tasks, ed. by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert A. King (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1982), p. 95: "Where Luther and Calvin differ is in their interpretation of the
relation between scripture and the Word of God. For Luther, as we have seen,
Jesus Christ is the center of scripture, and scripture is gospel only insofar
as it points to him. Although Calvin's theology seems to have the same center
as Luther's - the Word of God in Jesus Christ - at times the object of faith
(what is revealed) seems to be the formal authority of scripture rather than
scripture's witness to Jesus Christ."

17.
This point has been made very well by Kurt Marquart. See his "Response,"
Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible, pp. 399 - 400, and Anatomy of an
Explosion: Missouri in Lutheran Perspective (Ft. Wayne, Indiana: Concordia
Theological Seminary Press, 1977), p. 122. It is crucial to the interpretation
of the Bible as the Word of God in all its parts that one passage or set of
passages not be permitted to mitigate the clear sense of another text or series
of texts, even if this procedure leaves logical lacunae in the interpreter's
understanding. The Lutheran Confessions praised Abraham for not allowing the
most important aspect of God's revelation (the promise of the Savior) to
contravene anything else God had said, such as the command to kill Isaac, which
seemed to conflict directly with the Gospel (FC SD VII 46). Robert Preus shows
that this was the hermeneutic of Luther himself in "Luther and the Doctrine of
Justification," Concordia Theological Quarterly 48 (Jan. 1984) : 1 - 15.